


Two-Way Mirrors, and the Art of Breaking Through

by doritoFace1q



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming Out, Family, Fluff, How Do I Tag, Malfoy Manor, Non-Binary Scorpius Malfoy, Other, Trans Character, draco contemplates nudist communes, he fears them, imagine if i were this productive all the time, not quite as dramatic as the title makes it sound, overuse of metaphors (as per usual)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25633792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doritoFace1q/pseuds/doritoFace1q
Summary: Are you a boy or a girl?They could count on one hand every time they’d been asked that in their life, and they didn’t need a hand to count how many times they’d answered. Simple question, simple answer, right?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Scorpius Malfoy, Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 113
Collections: Trans Wizard Tournament 2020





	Two-Way Mirrors, and the Art of Breaking Through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenofThyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofThyme/gifts).



> Written for QueenofThyme as my contribution to the Trans Wizard Tournament :)
> 
> mild cw: unintentional misgendering on Draco's part pre-coming out

Scorpius remembered learning words as a child in the vague, dreamy way most people remember joy or heartbreak or the taste of their favourite food—hazy but clear all at once, like a figure behind a veil. Shifting and blurry at the edges, but solid enough to discern. And, sometimes, the veil would flutter just enough for them to catch a good, quick look before it drifted back down again.

They remembered their fascination—and their frustration—with words. Noises that actually meant something, that could convey meaning that more than just they understood. Better than pointing and gurgling by far, they had thought in the disjointed, cryptic way that children’s thoughts are formed. Far superior than waving their fists and screaming, and waiting for the grown-ups to clue in.

“Or,” they remembered being told. “It’s for a choice. Would you like this _or_ that? Does this belong to him _or_ her? Is the cat brown _or_ white?”

“Blue,” they remembered saying. They had just learned it, and had been enthralled by the way it plopped out of their mouth like a lollipop, or a glob of saliva.

And, so, _or_ meant choice.

Choices, too, were something that had both captivated and bewildered Scorpius. A simple explanation, “this or that,” masking a twisted, endless labyrinth full of dead ends like “you don’t have a choice,” and endless loops of “not an option.” Like an untangleable knot of yarn hidden under neat loops in the guise of a ball.

Scorpius had been six when their parents had sent him to school (another one of the “not an option” choices)—a proper, Muggle school, with lights connected to an eletrickity, books with pictures that didn’t move, and something called a parking lot out front. There had been a girl in their class, with bright green socks and a mass of curly brown hair bigger than her head, and she had sat next to them.

“I’m Mia,” she’d said. “I live in Swindon, but my mum works in Wiltshire, so I go to school here. Dad wanted me to go to the school by my aunt’s, so he could walk me, but mum said this one’s better, and mum’s the boss. Your hair is very white, are you a ghost? I have a puppy, his name’s Rose. Mum said I couldn’t name him that because he’s a boy, but he has yellow hair like Rose Tyler. Are you a boy or a girl? Do you like my socks? Gran got them for me for good luck.”

“What?” Scorpius had asked, which they thought was fair.

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

They didn’t know why they’d remembered that conversation so vividly. They certainly hadn’t remembered much else from their time at that school. Maybe it had been the girl, who’d lived in Swindon but gone to school in Wiltshire and went to visit her gran in Oxford every month and her nan in Cardiff every summer and talked about her yellow boy dog named Rose for the rest of the class. Maybe it had been the nerves from their first day at a new school in a new world and the girl at the back of the class with the big purple earrings who’d pushed him off the swings at break. Maybe their brain was just really weird.

More likely, it was because that was the first time they’d ever thought that they could _choose_.

They didn’t remember what answer they’d given. Maybe that was fair, too.

*

Scorpius was used to making decisions. It was something their parents had always encouraged—to think for themself, to make their own choices, not to be pressured into anything they didn’t want to do. Scorpius was used to making decisions, and they were good at it.

So why, when faced with such a simple question like this, couldn’t they just decide?

 _Are you a boy or a girl?_ They could count on one hand every time they’d been asked that in their life, and they didn’t need a hand to count how many times they’d answered. Simple question, simple answer, right?

 _Boy_ should have been the answer on their tongue. It was what the world saw them as, what their father and their friends and the paperwork saw them as, and what their mother had seen them as. _Son_ , their father called them. _This is my son. Is this your boy? Where’s the lad?_ It wasn’t _wrong_ , necessarily, not in the way other things were, but it didn’t feel right either. Like a shirt just a bit too tight, an itch they could never quite reach, or a traitorous little worm wiggling somewhere in their chest.

 _Girl_ didn’t fit, either, because they weren’t. To be a boy meant marching on in a suit of armour that slipped and pinched and caused hurt more than it stopped. To be a girl meant exchanging one ill-fitting suit and pretending in another.

 _Non-binary_ was a word they’d read in a Muggle library while visiting Albus one summer. _Not exclusively masculine or feminine_ , the book had said. _Identities existing outside the traditional gender binary_.

It wasn’t perfect—nothing ever was. But it fit, and that was all they really needed.

*

They’d expected questions. Looks of confusion, bewilderment. They’d prayed for anything but “ _how do you know_ ?” if only because they didn’t know how they’d answer. It’d be like asking how they knew they were right-handed, or how they knew that they preferred cold weather to hot. They just _did_.

There’d been none of that. “What do I call you?” was all he’d asked, and Scorpius thought that they might have loved him just a bit more for that. “My partner?”

They’d been lying on Albus’s bed, the two of them, Scorpius’s feet dangling over the edge of the mattress and Albus’s kicked up onto his pillows. Scorpius had snorted. “That makes it sound like we’re married,” they’d said.

“Themfriend?” Albus suggested. “Goob?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Lover?”

“ _Goob_?” Scorpius laughed.

“I read it in a magazine!” Albus protested.

“ _What_ magazine?”

“You—!” Scorpius ducked Albus’s playful swipe, laughing all the while. Albus rolled his eyes. “Goob,” he grumbled.

“I love you too.”

Albus snorted again and reached down, twining his hand with theirs. Scorpius squeezed, and he squeezed back.

“It’s almost a shame,” said Albus, breaking the silence. “Scorpion Monarch just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

They hurled a pillow at him and he laughed, falling off the side of the bed.

*

Winter break drew closer like an army marching through the night, or a low grey fog rolling in through the streets—slowly, then faster, then suddenly there all at once.

“You could come to my place,” Albus suggested, dragging his trunk out from under his bed. “My parents would love it. They never shut up about you in their letters—I think they might like you more than their actual kids.” He flipped open the lid of his trunk and coughed, waving away the cloud of dust. “Or we could stay,” he said, wrinkling his nose and brushing away a dead spider. It drifted to the ground like a speck of fluff, long, spindly legs shriveled and curled up against its body. Like a tiny, moldy All-Flavour Bean. “I don’t think McGonagall would mind.”

Scorpius shook their head. “No,” they said, picking at a stray thread on the sleeve of their shirt. “I—” They blew out a puff of air, blowing away a strand of hair that had fallen in front of their face. “I want to tell him. I do.” The hair fell back in front of their eyes and they scowled, pushing it behind their ear. “I just—” They pressed the heels of their hands into their eyes and groaned, falling back against their pillows. The mattress bounced them up and down and they dropped their hands, staring up at the ceiling. There was a spider in the corner, they noted, spinning a tiny web. _You go, Mr. Spider_ , they thought, and then felt ridiculous.

The bed creaked as Albus sat down next to them. “What if I went with you?”

Scorpius swiveled their head to stare at him, eyes wide. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “You know. Backup. Or support. Whichever it turns out to be. Besides, it’s about time I met your dad, isn’t it?”

“You’ve already met him,” Scorpius said.

“In an alternate timeline which no longer exists,” Albus pointed out. “I don’t think that counts.”

Scorpius snorted. They looked down, kicking their feet lightly against the bedframe. “Okay,” they said.

“Yeah?”

Scorpius looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah.”

Albus grinned back.

*

Scorpius was hiding something. More specifically, Scorpius was hiding something from _him_.

That really shouldn’t have bothered Draco as much as it did—after all, he was getting to that age, when secrets and awkwardness around parents became the norm. He supposed he should have counted himself lucky that he could still tell when Scorpius was holding things back. After all, when he’d been his age, he’d been a good enough liar to hide just about anything from his family (or, rather, the company they kept).

There’d been a time when Scorpius would have told Draco everything— _had_ told him everything. He missed it.

Astoria would have been able to talk to him. They’d always been closer, Draco liked to think. Astoria had been the gentle wind to his rigid fronds, the warm smile and tinkling laughter where he’d had only stiffness and awkwardness to offer. He loved Scorpius, he really did, but that was far from enough to make up for the floundering feeling of being a fish out of water half the time. He’d heard somewhere that it was something that all parents felt, no matter how experienced. Like fighting an uphill battle with a boulder hell-bent on crushing you, or screaming at the wind and hoping to get a response. He hoped that was true.

Whatever _it_ was, Draco had no doubt in his mind that Albus Potter had something to do with it. The boy had shown up in the hearth with Scorpius a little under half an hour before Scorpius’s owl had, and the two had barely left Scorpius’s room for the past two days. Dinner had been strained in the awkward, unspoken way a conversation with a friend who’d just burst into tears unbidden was, and they’d barely shown up at breakfast before darting off again, Scorpius shouting something vague about the forest over the shoulder before they vanished. At lunch, Draco had dropped a gravy boat.

Draco had his suspicions, of course, ranging from simple and plausible to downright nefarious (which was, he could argue, fair—after all, hadn’t it only been last year that the pair had, quite literally, gotten lost during a jaunt through time?). Maybe Scorpius was failing Charms. Maybe they’d decided they wanted to drop out of school and run away together to join a Muggle nudist commune. Maybe they’d broken an heirloom. Maybe Scorpius was dying. Maybe he’d broken his wand. Maybe they’d been secretly breeding illegal Blast-Ended Skrewts in their dorm in the dead of night and brought the eggs with them to the Manor and they were about to hatch. Maybe Albus didn’t like Draco’s cooking.

Maybe they were finally going to announce that they were dating. They weren’t exactly good at being subtle.

He just hoped it wasn’t the skrewts.

*

There was a tension in the air during dinner that night, a heaviness in the air that prickled at Draco’s skin and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and just screamed _waiting_. He might have even called it magic.

“How’s school?” he asked, sawing at his pork chop (Too dry. Damn.) “O.W.L.S.? You haven’t said.”

“Hm.” Scorpius prodded at his mash with his spoon, pushing it into a small, lumpy mountain. “Good. Tough.” Albus cleared his throat and speared a pea off the edge of his plate. “Dad, can I talk to you?”

Albus looked up. Draco stilled. _Oh no, oh no, oh no,_ warred with _oh, Merlin, finally_ , in his head, and the two boys exchanged a glance. Albus nodded encouragingly, and Scorpius put his spoon down.

Draco put down his napkin. “Scorpius?”

Scorpius took a deep breath, and put his hands, palm-down, fingers spread, on the table in front of him. “Okay,” he said. “You know that feeling when you’re wearing a pair of shoes, and they’re just a bit too small, or big, or pinch your toes or your heels or something? Basically, they don’t fit?”

“Yes,” said Draco slowly.

“But, most of the time, you just keep wearing the shoes, right? Because you’ve already got them, and it’s not worth the hassle to go back and get new ones and go through the entire fitting and buying and stuff all over again.” He glanced up at Draco, and he nodded. “And you _feel_ like it’s fine, but it’s still uncomfortable, and then, suddenly, your feet are all fu—” He caught Draco’s warning look and swerved mid-sentence. “Messed up,” he corrected. “And you’re thinking how much you wished you hadn’t bought those shoes?”

“Well—yeah, I guess.” Draco nodded.

“I—” Scorpius wet his lips. “Well, it’s like that for me. Not the shoes, the not fitting part. Dad—” he took a deep breath. “Dad, I’m non-binary.”

Oh. _Oh_.

“Oh,” said Draco. “That means—” he racked his brains, “uh, not a boy or a girl, right?”

“That—yeah. Yeah it does.” Scorpius and Albus exchanged another glance, and Albus nodded, grinning. “Yes.”

Draco nodded. Nodded again. Then he stood, and, before he quite realized he was walking, he was next to Scorpius, and he was hugging hi— _them_.

“Thank you,” he said, and he felt them wrap their arms around him. “Thank you for telling me.”

He felt them grin against their shoulder. “Yeah,” they said, tightening their grip.

They were shaking, he realized—crying—and, for a moment, he panicked. And then he realized he was crying too, and he laughed. “What do I call you?” he asked. “How do I introduce you? Child? Kid?” He snorted. “My spawn?”

Scorpius huffed against his shoulder. “That works,” he said wetly. “Any of those.”

“Do you still want to be called Scorpius?”

Silence. Their fingers twitched against Draco’s shoulder. “Yeah,” they said. And then, quieter, “Mom chose it.”

 _Oh_.

He squeezed his arms around them, and they were still crying, and so was he. But that was fine.

*

That spring, among the pile of presents at the end of Scorpius’s bed was a box wrapped in more Spellotape than paper. They opened it, and out fell a new set of polished marble Gobstones, bundled up in a yellow, white, purple and black flag.

 _For my spawn_ , the card read. _Hopefully, they don’t lose this set too. Love, Dad_.

They grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [@doritoFace1q](http://doritoface1q.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Trans Wizard Tournament tumblr: [@transwizardtournament](https://transwizardtournament.tumblr.com/)


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